


At Her Altar

by Mengde



Category: Persona 5
Genre: But I swear it's sweet and not fetishized, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Loss of Virginity, Worship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-14 20:35:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11215794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mengde/pseuds/Mengde
Summary: Kurusu Akira wants his love, Niijima Makoto, to feel confident and powerful when they become intimate for the first time.  He doesn't want her to feel nervous or afraid.With a little sage advice from a friend, he thinks of a way he might be able to make it work.





	At Her Altar

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens when I sit down to write some pwp. A lot of feelings, some worship kink, and eventually - eventually, I promise - the sex happens.
> 
> Everyone's first time is terrible, or so I'm told. What if it didn't have to be? This is the thought behind this piece. Please enjoy.
> 
> UPDATE 12/24/17: It has been revealed that the P5A name (and to be assumed the 'canon' name) of the P5 Protagonist is "Amamiya Ren." It's a lovely name, and I will be using it in any other pieces I write, but this piece was written when "Kurusu Akira" was the only semi-canon name we had to go on and I have certain feelings about retconning such things, especially in oneshots like this. So I have tagged both names. :)

There is a definite hesitance in Niijima Makoto’s slender frame.  When he leans in to kiss her, Kurusu Akira detects its manifestation in the tensing of her muscles, the stiffness of her spine.  Her eyes are shut tighter than they should be.

He pulls away, his futon creaking slightly with the motion.  “What’s wrong?”

Makoto opens her eyes.  She looks rueful, Akira realizes.  Embarrassed, too.  He lets his hands drop away from her arms, gives her space.

“I’m afraid,” Makoto admits.

“Of what?”

She looks askance for a moment, clearly gathering her thoughts.  Akira waits, wanting her to be comfortable and knowing that he can best serve that by his silence.

“I’ve never done anything – I mean, you’re the only boyfriend I’ve ever had,” Makoto finally says.  “I’m afraid that I’m going to… mess up, somehow.”

Akira smiles.  “I’ve never done anything like this either,” he tells her.  “I think it’s normal to feel nervous.”

“Are you nervous?” she challenges him.

“A little.”

Makoto glares at him, though he can tell the expression isn’t serious.  “My stomach’s tying itself in knots,” she says, “and you’re ‘a little’ nervous?”

He tries a grin, but it isn’t the same here, in the real world.  “I’m the leader for a reason, right?  Cool head.”

She gives his forehead a playful flick.  “Big head, more like.”  Then her expression crumples and she turns away from him, gaze dropping to the dusty floor of his room.  “And now I think I’ve ruined the mood.”

“It’s okay,” he assures her.  “I have to lie low until the change of heart in Shido, anyway.  We have plenty of time.  Do you want to watch something instead?  I have a few DVDs I rented before I – well.  ‘Died.’”

He can instantly tell it was the wrong thing to say.  Makoto withdraws even further – not physically, but Akira can sense her pulling away from him.

“I was so worried,” she says after a moment.  “Even after all our preparations, we couldn’t know if you would be able to persuade Sis before Akechi could get to you.  All I could think was that I might never see you again.”

With her, there is no pretending.  Akira nods, lets a grimace appear on his face.  “It was close.  I didn’t know if I could do it.”

“But you did, and now that you’re back I want to treasure the time I have with you.  I want it to be wonderful, and it aggravates me that I’m just so _nervous._ ”  Makoto stares at her lap and doesn’t say anything for a little while.  Finally, she murmurs, “Everything just makes more sense, is easier, when I’m Queen.”

Akira sits up a bit, startled by her statement for reasons he can’t quite determine.  “What?”

She blushes, obviously embarrassed.  “I – when I’m Queen, I know exactly what to do.  I make plans, I find weaknesses, I fight.  Everything’s just so much clearer.”  Makoto shrugs.  “I know it’s a matter of context, but right now I wish I could be Queen instead of myself.”

Sensing, on some level, what she needs right now, Akira pulls Makoto against him and just holds her.  Somewhere in the back of his mind, a voice says to him, _You know how she feels.  You know what_ you _feel_ _like when you’re Joker._

“Let’s not just sit here up in our heads,” he says after a minute.  “We need to get out and distract ourselves.  Want to go to the arcade?”

Makoto smiles.  “Yes, if you’re okay with the fact that I’m going to embarrass you when we play Gun About together.”

“Of course I’m okay with it.  I’ll be with you.”

They slip their shoes back on, Akira grabs his bag – he knows Morgana might want to come with them – and they head out, locking up Leblanc behind them.  And as they leave, an idea percolates in Akira’s mind.  A tiny mote of inspiration lodges itself there and starts to grow.

_What if I could help Makoto feel the way she does when she’s Queen?_

He needs to bounce this off of someone.

* * *

“I want it to be special,” Akira says, staring up at the ceiling of Takemi Tae’s examination room.  “I know it’s supposed to be difficult, and sometimes painful, but I think I should be able to get around that.”

Takemi looks at him, stretched out on the exam table as though it were a therapist’s couch.  “You realize I’m a _medical_ doctor,” she says dryly.  “I’m not a shrink.”

“I was your ‘little guinea pig’ for months,” Akira points out.  “You can hear me out on this.”

She sighs.  “Fine.  Though I have to ask: why me?”

Akira gives a small shrug.  “I wanted to talk to a woman about this.  An older woman.  And my choices were you, my homeroom teacher, or a raging alcoholic.”

That makes Takemi chuckle.  “All right.  Fair enough.  So, your girlfriend is worried about screwing up your first time together.  You think you know how to make it so it isn’t terrible?”

With a nod, he says, “She told me that when she’s Qu – ah, when we’re being the Phantom Thieves, that she feels like she knows what to do.  She said she wishes she could feel that way with… this.”

“Okay,” Takemi acknowledges.  “That makes sense.  It’s normal for people to feel empowered when they take on an alter ego.”

Akira smiles, thinking back to Makoto’s Awakening – the first time he’d seen her true self, the iron-masked warrior from a world without law or mercy.  “I just wish I could help her feel that way with… this.  That’s how I think I could help her.”

There are a few seconds of silence as Takemi digests this.  Finally, she says, “Okay.  I _really_ don’t need the details, but is there a way for her to assume that role when you’re alone together?”

Akira hesitates, wondering how thoroughly he should explain the rules of the Metaverse to Takemi.  He ultimately decides that her knowledge of his identity as a Phantom Thief is more than enough burden for her.  “There’s more to it than just putting on a mask.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Takemi tells him, her tone almost painfully dry.  “But apply the principle of Occam’s razor.  If she feels most powerful and confident when she’s a Phantom Thief, then the easiest way to get her to feel like that is to have her _be_ a Phantom Thief.  In that… moment.”

It’s a good idea, Akira thinks, but as far as he knows, there’s nowhere the Meta-Nav can take them at the moment but Mementos.  Hardly the ideal spot for a romantic liaison.

Still, he can’t deny that the thought of being close with Makoto in that other world, the two of them in masks and battle gear, makes him edgy in a distinctly sexual way.

“If there _is_ a way,” Takemi continues, “you should do it.  You want both of you to go into this excited and happy, not wondering how bad it’s going to be.  Trust me; I’m a doctor.”

He turns his head so he can raise an eyebrow at her.  “What does being a doctor have to do with that advice?”

“Nothing.  But if you tell people to do something and then say you’re a doctor, you’d be surprised how often that works.”  She points at the door.  “For example: get out of my exam room.  Trust me; I’m a doctor.”

Akira smiles.  “Thanks.  I appreciate you hearing me out.”

He leaves the clinic, grabbing his bag and putting his sweatshirt’s hood up as he goes.

“So?” Morgana asks, sticking his head out of the bag.  “Everything okay?”

Akira takes a second to respond, composing his thoughts into the right question.  “Morgana, Palaces are formed around a person’s distorted desires, right?”

There is the hint of mockery in Morgana’s voice as he answers.  “Yeah.  We’ve only knocked out seven of them, you still aren’t a hundred percent on that?”

“So,” Akira says, ignoring the barb, “what forms when a person’s desires _aren’t_ distorted?”

“What?  I mean, nothing does,” Morgana tells him.  “People who know themselves don’t get distorted.  They might have Shadows, but they’re not even malignant enough to show up in Mementos.  They just don’t have a manifested presence in the Metaverse.”

“Same for Persona users.”

“Exactly.”

“Futaba once mentioned the idea of using the cognitive world to create a happy, peaceful place,” Akira continues.  “Has anyone ever tried?”

Morgana shakes his head.  “Not that I know of.  Why all of these questions suddenly?  What did you talk about with Takemi?”

“Nothing much.”  Akira smiles to himself.  “She just gave me an idea.”

* * *

Standing alone in his room, Akira tries to ignore how foolish he feels.  He has no idea if this is going to work.  But he knows he has to try, for Makoto.

He presses the button to activate the Meta-Nav.

“Kurusu Akira,” he says into it.  “The attic above Leblanc.”

There is a pulse from his phone.  But he knows he is missing the keyword.

What are his own keywords?

He thinks about Makoto.  He thinks about how she makes him feel.  How he wants to make _her_ feel.  The – not a Palace, but whatever it is – has to form around a desire.  He knows that much.  What is the essence of his desire for her?

For reasons he can’t explain, when it hits him, he says it aloud.

“I want,” he murmurs, “to worship her.”

The Meta-Nav seems to pulse, just slightly, but nothing happens.

_Where do people worship?_

He clears his throat.  “Kurusu Akira.  The attic above Leblanc.  A temple.”

And he is suddenly in that other world, and he knows that this is the place he needs to be.

* * *

Makoto knows something is different when _she_ gets a text from _him._   Akira doesn’t start text chains.  He is a serial responder.

 _Come to my place after school,_ Akira says.  _I have a surprise for you._

She looks up to see if anyone else in class has noticed her checking her phone.  To her mild horror, she realizes she is blushing – blushing so hard it seems to her as though her face is glowing.

But, of course, no one is paying any attention to her.

 _See you then,_ Makoto sends back.  Deciding she wants to check in, she adds, _Is everything okay?_

It takes him only a few seconds to write back.  _Better than okay.  Looking forward to it._

And now she’s blushing again.

The rest of the day seems to drag on interminably.  Makoto actually finds herself zoning out in class, which she never does.  Damn him for sending her that text so early.  He could have waited.

Then again, maybe he wanted it this way.  She decides that if he _did_ do this on purpose, he’s going to catch hell for it.

By the time she actually gets to Leblanc after school, her stomach is doing somersaults and her heart is actively pounding.  She’s had drawn-out fights with Shadows where her heart never once pounded like it is now.

Boss smiles at her as she walks in.  “Niijima-kun,” he says.  “He’s upstairs.  I asked him if he wanted me to close early, given how dead it is –” he gestures at the total lack of customers – “but he said you won’t be staying for that long.  Guess he’s got something special planned, huh?”

“It seems so,” Makoto says, smiling back.  “Thank you again for your hospitality.”

“Of course.  Go on up.”

Makoto ascends the stairs, feeling herself tremble slightly as she does.  She’s not sure what she’s expecting, but when she sees Akira lying on his bed, playing a game on his phone, she knows this isn’t it.

“Hello,” she says, moving to stand over him.  “Is the surprise that there’s slightly more dust than usual?”

Akira puts his phone down and grins up at her.  An odd thrill shoots through her at that grin; it’s the way he looks when he’s Joker.

“I figured something out, after the other day,” he says.  “Do you trust me?”

Charmed, Makoto nods.  “Of course.”

“Then open up the Meta-Nav on your phone.”

Frowning, she does as instructed.  A moment afterward, Akira presses a button on his own phone, and a text message alert pops up on her screen.

“Read it aloud,” he says.

Makoto stares at it.  “Kurusu Akira,” she reads.  “The attic above Leblanc.  A… temple.”

And suddenly, the world begins to shift and distort.  Makoto stares at Akira, the only fixed point of reference.  “What’s happening?” she asks as reality twists itself into knots around them.  “This is impossible.  Do you have a Palace?”

“No,” Akira says, and the surroundings begin to return to – well, _normal_ is a relative term.  Makoto finds herself standing in an expansive room.  The floor is covered in tatami mats, the walls are shoji made of washi.  There are no windows, but sunlight streams through open doors decorated with scenes of nature in the traditional ukiyo-e style.  “This,” he continues, “is my Temple.”

Makoto realizes that her jaw is hanging open, but she can’t find the presence of mind to close it.  She finally manages to get out, “Your… Temple?”

“The opposite of a Palace,” he says.  “I figured it out.  A Palace manifests around a powerful, distorted desire.  So I thought, what if my desire isn’t distorted?  I should still have some kind of location in the Metaverse if my desire’s powerful enough.”  He gets to his feet – the transition between worlds left him sitting cross-legged on the tatami.  “Let me show you around.”

He slides a door aside, and Makoto finds herself looking at the great hall of the Temple.  Akira clearly has Buddhist roots, because the great hall is constructed of lavishly lacquered wood, decorated with ostentatious gold trim.  Multiple rows of kneeling cushions are spread before a massive altar made of brightly painted wood and more gold.

Instead of a Buddha, however, the altar has a statue of Makoto.  Not just Makoto, either – it’s of Queen, her expression serene, her hands held before her in a traditional Buddhist mudra.  The academic part of her Makoto’s mind recognizes the gesture as the Bhûtadâmara mudra, the sign for warding off evil.

Makoto opens her mouth to say something and realizes there are no words.

“I know it’s a little overboard,” Akira says, and she can hear the playfulness in his tone.  “I didn’t design any of this, though.  This is just… what there is, inside me.”  He gestures at the statue.  “This is how I feel.”

Makoto turns to him.  “You’ve put me up on a pedestal to be worshipped?”

“Maybe a little.  I hope that doesn’t make you uncomfortable.”

She shakes her head slowly, looking at the awe-inspiring image of herself.  “Not really.  I mean, this is your cognition of me, right?  A divine figure, a shield against evil?  It’s… pretty flattering.”

He grins again.  “Follow me.”

Akira leads her through more lavishly appointed rooms, past great landscape paintings of pastoral scenes, out into an idyllic garden complete with koi pond, gravel river, and cherry blossom tree in full bloom.  Makoto inhales the subtle scent of the tree, watches the fish drifting lazily through the water.  There is a small bench in front of the pond, and she lets Akira lead her there.  She sits down with him, overwhelmed and awed.

“I asked a friend,” Akira says after a minute, “for advice.  About the situation.  She said something that led me here – ‘If she feels most powerful and confident when she’s a Phantom Thief, then the easiest way to get her to feel like that is to have her _be_ a Phantom Thief.’”

Makoto blushes again.  “Takemi-san?”

“Well, it was her or Ohya-san.”

She has to laugh at that.  “So you thought you would see if there was somewhere in the Metaverse we could go together?”

“Exactly.  I knew that if I could find my own location within the Metaverse, where my desire for you was manifested – well.  Here.”  Akira is suddenly engulfed in blue flame, covering his entire body.  It fades just as quickly as it appeared, and in its wake he is wearing his mask and coat.  Joker sits on the bench with her, grinning, his eyes shining behind his mask.

“How?” Makoto asks.  “You’re not a threat to – yourself.”

“In other people’s Palaces, our spirit of rebellion manifests itself when we’re perceived as a threat,” Joker says.  “But the essence of this place is who I am.  This is, too.”  He lays a hand on her shoulder.  “Be who you really are, Makoto.  Be Queen.”

She shuts her eyes and summons up the feelings of defiance within herself.  The desire to walk her own path, to never be used again, washes over her, and she senses herself change.  The iron mask closes over the upper half of her face.  Her body is sheathed in leather and metal.  Power courses through her.

She opens her eyes and looks at Joker as Queen.

He’s still grinning, but she can tell it’s now from excitement.  His eyes roam up and down her body, and here, in this place, Queen isn’t embarrassed.  It is entirely natural for him to want her so transparently, so unreservedly.  He worships her, after all.

She reaches up to remove her mask, but he catches her hand in his own.  With a frown, she tells him, “I don’t like my mask, you know that.  And it’s only going to get in the way.”

“ _I_ like it,” Joker counters.  “It’s beautiful.  And…”  He carefully raises a hand and lightly brushes the tips of his gloved fingers against the iron.

Queen gasps as an electric thrill shoots through her, traveling down her spine and ending between her legs.  She’s never had someone else touch her mask before.  “It’s big and ugly,” she counters, for the moment choosing not to ask how it’s possible that she can feel through it as though it were her own skin.

“It’s a part of you,” Joker says, lightly tracing the contours of the mask.  Queen bites her lip to keep from gasping at the feather touches against the smooth metal.  “How could I not love it?”

Without thinking, she reaches out and grips his shoulders, hard.  There is a new, strangely pleasant sensation growing between her legs, and it’s almost overwhelming in its intensity.  She realizes with a shock that it’s simple: she’s more turned on than she’s ever been in her life.

“I can’t kiss you with it on,” she protests, hearing the roughness in her voice and knowing it’s another sign.  Being here, with him, like this – his mask, his coat, those gloves caressing what she is now painfully aware of as a _very_ erogenous zone manifested on her _face_ – is rapidly tipping her past the point of no return.  She has never been aware of it before, but she needs him in a primitive, physical way.

It also now occurs to her that she’s never actually gotten into or out of her clothes as Queen.  They just appear and disappear.  She has no idea if she even _can_ get out of them.

“It’s a cognitive world,” he says.  “Our masks, our clothes, are manifestations of aspects of ourselves.  When we’re in Palaces or Mementos, we need them to be bulwarks against the Shadows, so they’re solid, powerful.  But they don’t have to be here.”

Joker reaches down to her shoulder, and as his fingers touch the leather pauldron he asks, “Do you _want_ me to touch you?”

“Yes,” Queen says, and has never meant anything more in her life.

Blue flame flares up around his fingers – pinprick versions of the ones that engulf them as they transform in other parts of the Metaverse.  His hand passes through the leather as though it isn’t even there.  Queen trembles slightly as he traces his touch up from her shoulder to her throat, leaving a trail of blue fire behind him.  She can tell her clothes are never actually disappearing, but instead permitting him passage.  _The gates of my soul are opening,_ she thinks, and knows that however saccharine the thought is, in this place it is a literal truth.

She reaches out to lay a hand against his chest and sees his vest part in a wall of blue flame, knows that he is open to her just as she is to him.  A sense of profound vulnerability takes hold of her, but instead of being mortified, she is deeply, terribly excited by the knowledge that there are no more barriers between them.

Queen presses herself against Joker and kisses him.  She senses their masks melt away just enough to keep from arresting the movement.  A sheet of blue flame surrounds their bodies as the angular planes of his chest and abdomen press against her own, skin on skin.  He is warm, and his skin is soft.

A thought takes hold of her then, half desire, half compulsion.  She breaks the kiss and stands, motioning for him to follow her.  Joker acquiesces, and Queen pulls him out of the garden, back into the temple, until they stand in the great hall, before the altar, beneath the great statue of her.

“Here,” Queen says.  “I want to be with you here.”  Certain knowledge possesses her – a feeling of desire, _his_ desire, the one around which this entire Temple has manifested.  “Worship me at the altar of myself,” she says, the words seeming to come from a place outside herself.

His eyes light up.

They make a pile of the cushions before the altar.  Queen pulls Joker down onto it, the flames rising around them, glorying in the feeling of his skin and his weight atop her.  She touches his mask, grins as he shudders with unrestrained pleasure.  His hands run down the length of her body, and she says, “Keep your gloves manifested.  I like how they feel.”

“Of course,” Joker replies.  Instantly, the touch of his bare fingers is replaced with the sensation of leather, and Queen gasps as that wonderful texture glides across her flesh.  Certain facts about her own outfit become painfully obvious in retrospect.  She is learning a great deal about herself right now.

Queen trembles as the tip of his cock grazes against her labia.  She can tell how hard he is, painfully hard – she abruptly realizes that she can sense his need just as her own.  There is some kind of empathic link between them, and she is absolutely certain it is because they are in this place, wreathed in the mingled fire of their souls.

“I need you,” she whispers into his ear.  “I’m ready.”

Joker takes things slowly and carefully, for which she is grateful.  She is already wet – how could she not be, she thinks, with the way he’s been touching her?  With no frame of reference, she can’t decide if he’s big or she’s small, but after the first careful thrust she decides, sharply, that it doesn’t matter.  Queen wraps her arms around Joker in an iron grip, sinks her teeth into the flesh of his shoulder, and moans into him. Her hips begins to move in slow rhythm with his.

He doesn’t have to ask if she’s all right.  She knows he can sense her small pain, just as she felt his, and that he can tell she doesn’t care.  He begins to pick up the pace, just slightly, and Queen writhes beneath him, her arms locked against the smooth muscles of his back.

“I know what you want to say,” Queen rasps, drowning in the sensations of him moving inside her, the pleasure burning away the very last of her inhibitions.  “Say it.  I want to hear it.”  Joker hisses, not unhappily, as she digs her nails into his flesh.  “Say it.”

“Queen,” he gasps, his rhythm increasing.  “You’re my Queen.”

“More,” she commands him, and with a sudden burst of movement and muscle, she is on top, now in control of the rhythm, pinning his hands against the softness of the cushions.

“I’ve wanted you since I first met you,” Joker groans.  “When I saw you Awaken –” he breaks off with a sharp inhalation as she presses herself down on him, bites at his neck.  “When I saw you Awaken, I knew I needed you.  I wanted to touch you, to worship you, for so long.”  He grunts, deep in his chest, as she presses herself against him, onto him, and grinds her hips into his.

“I’m your Queen,” she tells him.  “Say it again.”

“You’re my Queen,” he acknowledges, and she can detect a quivering in his lower body that tells her, just as her empathic sense of him tells her, that he’s close.  “My Queen…”

She knows her own orgasm is coming, too, riding the waves of unfamiliar sensation and excitement.  Instinctively, she knows what she needs to take her over the edge.  “Touch my mask again,” she tells him.  “Like you did before.”

His trembling fingers caress the metal, sending that thrill through her again, and this time he doesn’t stop.  She rolls him back on top of her, wanting his weight, and surrenders herself to the feelings of his fingers, his cock, his body.  Queen gasps and arches into him, surprised at the suddenness of the climax, and she can sense him spill over the edge too, bucking against her, a long, low groan escaping him.

She drifts, then, half-numb from overloaded senses, safe and warm.  When she comes fully back to herself a few minutes later, Joker is on his side next to her, curled up, fingers entwined in hers.

Taking off her mask, becoming Makoto again, she tells him, “Thank you.”

He takes off his mask, too.  “Of course.  Thank _you._ ”

The whole encounter, she realizes, lasted only a couple minutes once they came into the great hall.  It had felt much longer while she was enmeshed in it, in _him._

“We’ve been here less than an hour,” she says.  “We have plenty of time left before I have to go home.”

“Yes,” he murmurs.  “Plenty of time.”

Makoto hesitates, then asks, “Do you think I have a Temple?”

“You might,” Akira acknowledges.  “Do you want to check?”

She thinks about it.  “Not today,” she finally says.  “We have tomorrow for that.”

They both close their eyes, secure in that knowledge. 

They have tomorrow.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this piece!
> 
> You can't get pregnant in the Metaverse. Just... you can't. (Just gonna throw that out there now.)


End file.
